Making fun of the Paris Olympics a few weeks before the opening ceremony: this is the ambition of The Coubertin spiritan unconventional comedy in which the French delegation, on the verge of collapse and unable to win a single gold medal, places all its hopes on Paul, a simple and exceptional shooting champion.
Inside The Coubertin spiritin theaters this Wednesday, May 8, the competition quickly turns into a fiasco because of this surprising antihero played by Benjamin Voisin, César for the best male contender for lost illusions. Absorbed in his sport, to the point of forgetting the values of Olympism, he will be distracted from the challenge of the competition.
A nod to the present
The film was made with few resources, in just 23 days and without help from the Olympic committee. “It was interesting to work with the limits,” explains director Jérémie Sein, who got his start in the series Parliament. “We are the mouse in front of the giant. They’re not going to scare us. “They are going to leave us alone.”
“It was fun to play with illusions to give the impression of witnessing a real Olympic Games,” continues the filmmaker, who drew on numerous memories from adolescence and great moments in sports history. His references: the aesthetics of the 1984 Los Angeles and 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.
The script of this comedy, although written in 2016, a year before the Games were awarded to Paris, sometimes resonates with current events: bedbugs in the Olympic village, unfinished work, doping problems. “I had bed bugs in 2018, so I added them to the script at that time,” the director laughs.
Initially, the project was futuristic, he reveals: “It took place in Qatar in 2032. There were smart cars. When you start looking for funding, the money doesn’t come and you have to rationalize your project. When the Games were awarded “When we traveled to Paris in 2017 , we said it made sense to set the film there.”
Silly and sophisticated
Inspired by the rowdy spirit of 2000s American comedies like Step Brothers with Will Ferrell, The Coubertin spirit He is not afraid of the Olympic institution. “In comedy, if there is no strong problem, there is no comedy,” says Jérémie Sein.
“My characters have eight years of mental age as in Step Brothers. The film starts from the caricature – which I accept at first – before taking another direction,” continues this sports fan who wanted to make a “moving satire.” “The cult of French defeat is constitutive of our love for sport.” He insisted.
To underline this cartoonish dimension, Jérémie Sein hired the duo Sacha Béhar and Augustin Shackelpopoulos, alias DAVA, for a brief role parodying 24-hour news channels. A duo with corrosive humor and the thousandth power that brings a crazy touch to this satire:
“DAVA has a very French humor and at the same time they are very critical of France. It was very important that they were there because they immediately bring a character, a tone to the film. The viewer immediately knows what kind of humor it has. He knows that it is going to be very silly but also a little sophisticated.
Uncomfortable moments
the humor of The Coubertin spirit, very unique, favors moments of shame. “When I sent the script, I was very calm. I knew it would work. Then, after a while, faced with refusals from financiers, I began to understand that people couldn’t understand this humor and found it completely stupid.”
It is this unique tone that seduced Benjamin Voisin: “When I read the script, I told myself that it had never been done in France,” exclaims the actor, who was nourished by the moment of Joël Dupuch’s play, the oyster farmer. of Small handkerchiefsto give rarity to your champion character something simple.
“I really want to make debut films like this to try to participate in the cinema of tomorrow, otherwise I will get bored and lock myself in,” concludes the actor who hopes to find Jérémie Sein in a new film with a wrestling background. . Objective this time: “to propose even more radical and more adult things.”
Source: BFM TV
